Scripture: Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 1:67-79, Luke 3:1-6
Title: Advent Longing

Sermons are meant to be heard – so listen along here.

There is a single word that has become my refrain this Advent:
Longing.
Last Sunday, Chad said the question for him and for all of us this Advent is “where should we look?”
And I agree wholeheartedly.  But I’d like to add on to it – because for me, looking is infused with longing.
It’s such a descriptive word, Longing.
It implies we know something is coming, but it’s not here yet.
It’s a word of expectation, and yet somehow conveys our impatience at how long it’s taking.
I even feel it’s a word full a kind of urgency.  
We long for warm weather in the depths of winter.
We long for good test results and babies to be born and our kids to get to the next phase.
We long for food and financial security.  

We are in a season full of longing.

Nate and I carpool on Sunday mornings, and often we spend our commute back to S Mpls talking and reflecting on the service and the words we heard.  Last week, as we were driving, Nate talked about how this time of year is so hard, because we don’t like waiting, and we don’t like holding onto both joy and despair.  

I have been thinking of this conversation all week. He is exactly right.

(file that under things I never thought I’d say in a sermon)
We finish our Thanksgiving celebrations and immediately put up our Christmas decorations.
We move from holiday to holiday, not wanting to sit too long in the waiting place.
That tension becomes too great for us.
We jump quickly to joy.
But in the church – we don’t get the luxury of moving straight to Christmas.   
We have Advent.

Advent is my favorite church season.
yes, even though it can be uncomfortable, I still love it.
I love the candle-lighting
I love the Advent hymns about hope and waiting and anticipation.
I love decorating in stages.  
I love the slow march toward the manger.
And, maybe most of all, I love the tension that Advent carries with it.
That Advent requires us to hold both.
Holding both joy and sorrow, both hope and fear.
I like to embrace the tension and longing of Advent because it feels more like real life that way.

We don’t ever get to have just one thing.
Yes our world is filled with love and joy, but it also at the same time feels almost impossibly broken and just not right.  

This is Advent.
The hope in the midst of despair.
It’s why we light candles.  
Little by little, we watch light break into the darkness.  

This week, Presiding Bishop Eaton reflected on what she called the “unsettled season of Advent” – and what that might mean for us.  She wrote:
“In some ways Advent creates a certain restlessness. It may be one of the few seasons of the year when we become more aware of our longing for wholeness and more alert to the signs that something is approaching.”

There it is again. Longing.
Bishop Eaton said Advent is a season where we long for wholeness.
It’s a season where we notice the dark, and we look for the light to come and change things.

All of the texts we heard from today express this longing and this tension in such great detail.
It’s helpful to understand a bit what the people of Israel were longing for in these times.
All their lives, they had heard that their struggling would be relieved.
This is what the prophet Micah is talking about, this is what John the Baptizer is talking about as he quotes the prophet Isaiah.  
The Israelites were in exile, they were waiting, longing, for the Lord to come and relieve them.  The people needed a word of hope.
And they got one.
But it didn’t exactly look like they thought it would.

Micah 3 said that when the Lord of hosts comes he will be like refiner’s fire and fuller’s soap.  Refiners fire is way to remove impurities from precious metals, and fuller’s soap is a strong washing agent that was used to clean the dirt from sheep’s wool.  

This isn’t just a simple search and rescue, when Christ comes, things won’t be the same anymore. And thank goodness, because things are pretty messed up.
In Micah, even the offerings in the temple weren’t clean.  This was a big deal, and Micah was telling people that when God comes, the system is going to change, the corruption is going to go away, and a new system will be put in place.
In today’s Gospel from Luke chapter 3, John the baptizer quotes the prophet Isaiah, telling Israel to “prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways smooth.”
What for?
“So all shall see the salvation of God.”

That’s what we’re longing for.
That’s what we’re preparing for.
We’re waiting and preparing for the coming of Christ.
To save us.
To change the broken systems of this world and show us a new way.
And, like the Israelites, we don’t get exactly what we want.
We don’t get the larger than life heroic King.
We get a baby.
We don’t get God for us.
We get God with us.
And in that baby, we see all that we have hoped for come true.
And so for that, like Chad said last week, we sing.
Our second reading today was from Luke’s Gospel, chapter 1, and it’s commonly referred to as Zechariah’s song.
Zechariah was John’s father.  And he and his wife Elizabeth had been trying to have a baby for a long time. And then Gabriel comes to tell Zechariah that the time has come and Elizabeth is going to have a baby.
And Zechariah has a hard time believing it.

Because at this point, they had given up hope of it happening at all.  Luke’s gospel uses the phrase “well along in years” two separate times to describe why Zechariah was skeptical.
He even asks Gabriel “how can I be sure?”
And Gabriel’s response is “I am Gabriel.”
Angel of God here Zechariah – what other proof do you need?
And then Gabriel makes Zechariah mute.

Yep.  He can’t talk until he knows the promises are true.  And when it happens – when his wife has the baby, he holds him and then he opens his mouth and sings.  

And his song is stunning – a song of joy and of realized promises.
Because he knew that what he had longed for was coming true.
Zechariah is just a guy who has a hard time believing what he has heard is true.  

So he sang:

Luke 1: 68-69, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David.

Luke 1: 78-79, By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

 

Zechariah is just a guy who has a hard time believing what he has heard is true.
We are the same.
We know there is something more.  We know what we’ve had promised to us but we wait and struggle and despair and wonder if the darkness is winning.
Then we hear Zechariah sing his song this morning – singing that God will break in, that God will bring light, and guide our feet into the way of peace.  And are reassured.  We are reminded that Advent brings Christ into our dark world again.  

And then … we light candles.  

We light candles to remind us of these promises of God.
That there is a light in the darkness and darkness cannot overcome it.
Today we lit the candle of peace.
We lit it knowing that the world is not peaceful.
We lit it knowing that there was yet another fatal attack in our own country this week.
We lit it full of longing.
Longing for peace to be realized.
Longing for God with us.
Longing for the world to be healed and made whole.

This is Advent.
Our preparation.
Our waiting.
Our reminder that Christ has come and is still coming.
Our reminder to be watchful in our waiting, to look around us for moments of hope and peace and light breaking through.
And today, even today, we too, sing.  

Amen.

 

End of worship closing:

There is good news.
Yes, we know it has come already.
We know it’s already here.
But still, our world is dark.
And so we need to hear that Christ is coming. Again.  

Christ is always coming.

To us. Right here, right now.
The Gospel from Luke began with the reminder of Christ’s coming into that world:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

And yet these words are still spoken to us today –  

In the fifteenth year of the twenty-first century, when Barack Obama was President of the United States, and Mark Dayton was governor of Minnesota, and Elizabeth Eaton was presiding bishop of the ELCA, the word of the Lord came to Prince of Peace in Brooklyn Park.

The word of the Lord came to Prince of Peace in Brooklyn Park.
To you and me.

Today.
Right here.
So now do we take that word into the world, as we go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.